Nick Cage is a favorite. You either like him or you don’t. I do. And I liked this film. He holds my interest by simply watching him ‘think’. That watchfulness of the camera for nuances of his facial expressions was the tactic used in the National Treasure franchise, and is employed in Knowing with similar results.  

For some reason, we like watching Cage unravel puzzles, of either a breadcrumb trail to treasure buried by the Masons or a numbers trail left by a wack grandmother who left messages about the future and that of her daughter. Cage pursues the clues until he uncovers the solution, and he does it believably, hence our willingness to sit and wait for the light bulb to go off over his head. 

Unlike the character, Ben Gates, chasing treasure, this character, John Koestler, is a darker, more brooding sort of astrophysicist with a sure sense of ‘reality’. He’s sure we are dust, and will return to dust, that’s all, nothing more, anything else is self-indulgence born of a need for comfort. Either to assuage underlying discomfort with  Koestler‘s philosophy, or the viewer’s, the script includes a few scraps on the necessity of and faith in religion and God. These references are transient, as is life, so merely by the small mention throughout the story, the enormity of that ‘not knowing for sure’ aspect of faith entangles the viewer as surely as any graveyard scene ever does. 

The son, Caleb, engagingly portrayed by young  Chandler Canterbury, serves as the foil and focus of the faith debate, as he has troubling issues, and a biblical name we soon learn probably has to do with his father being the son of a minister. John allows Caleb his choice in the comforts of religion without keeping his own doubts to himself. For a child, this is a lot of ‘thinking’. We have to enjoy watching this youngster ‘think’ a lot, which is made easier by the casting of this rapidly rising actor. He played the 8 year old Benjamin Button with Brad Pitt and is in production now with Liam Neeson and Chrisitina Ricci for another thriller/dramatic horror type film, After.Life, with more very likely in the works. 

Also keeping our interest while she ‘thinks’ is Lara Robinson, performing the roles of both the grandmother Lucinda and granddaughter Abby. Abby comes along in the story about the time we would be getting a bit bored watching Cage and  Canterbury ‘think’. Relative unknown actor Robinson is a charming child, as well, and rounds out the characters we care about.  

Lara’s mother, Diana Wayland, played by Rose Byrne, is superficial in her thought constructs by comparison. Diana Wayland must serve as the devil’s advocate for the viewer, and doesn’t get much in the way of scripting to allow us that connection or satisfaction of asking the right questions for us. Nor does Phil Beckman (Aussie actor Ben Mendelsohn), Koestler’s fellow university professor whose job it is to insert the supposition that numbers schemes are ‘a dime a dozen’ and people ‘see what they want to see’ in them. By contrast, Diana only gets to ask ‘what happens when the numbers run out?’ In all fairness, Diana rapidly goes from skeptical to hysterical due entirely to Koestler’s intensity. 

There is a dreariness of place and a fabrication of horror in this script which may be difficult to take for some. Pale, mute, tall guys in black suddenly appear and disappear, acquiring the requisite knee-jerk jumpiness for their sightings. 

It is worth noting, in our dire straits as a nation, where outsourcing everything is commonplace that this is another movie made elsewhere—this one in Australia—and that the scary guys and other extras, and all the economical benefits of the production went overseas. 

The twist ending of Knowing satisfies for the most part, given the subtle continuity of religion woven into the story. Cage passionately and relentlessly unwinds the trail of Lucinda‘s numbers as the scientist, Koestler, who can’t not look, even though he’s sure he doesn’t want to see the puzzle’s answers. For the most part, this is a big screen experience, so catch it now, and then re-watch on DVD. There is a warning with the rating due to depicted violence, catastrophe and horror-movie-like scenes. As a dramatic thriller, it definitely fills the bill.